He is actually a project by a group of serious Finnish rappers, nuERA, who normally rhyme in english. Petri's voice is done by Petri Laurila alias Dream, the founding member of the act. Apparently nuERA got pissed off at the bad sales of their recent album, and decided to create an artist who would top the charts just by being a stupiddisgustingredneck, and at the same time a spoof most people couldn't understand.

The first full P.N. album was released today. It will be no.1 next week. Go Finland.

But I must admit that while Petri Nygård was just created to fuck with the entire country (pardon my french), his lyrics are still quite funny. He has often been described as the "Eminem of Finland", and that is actually very fitting. Both say crazy stuff they don't really believe in just to make people buy their record and make others mad. Petri just adds the basic-Finn-yokel-image to the mix.

In a recent interview Sport, who is one of the guys running Petri's label and has also appeared on his mp3-EP as Obelix Häkkinen, told that the first Petri Nygård tracks were made around 1998. They were initially just created as a joke (duh), but after "waiting for the right moment" the Liepo posse decided to see if they could actually sell it to the public by first creating a hype on the internet. I would say this "experiment" was quite successful. :)

After I created this node, Petri actually has performed a few live gigs around Finland. His wardrobe naturally consisted of a thick jacket, a scarf around his face and sunglasses, so nobody could recognize Dream and the Petri myth wasn't broken.No, I didn't witness the performance myself. But I've seen photographic evidence.

Petri's second official album was released last friday. I wasn't expecting it to be good, but I must say it was surprisingly bland and boring. The funny lyrics were the only redeeming feature of this joke product, but for the most part they just seem tired and repetitive.
The last track of the album is the only one I found funny and listeneable, probably because it is a direct continuation to the Pillumagneetti EP.
I love the message "Vitun MP3Äpärät" ("fuckingMP3-bastards") behind the back cover's copyright notices. :)